Publisher’s Note: This concludes the first in a series of Pinnacle Conversations, the intent of which are to provide state-of-the-art information on critically important issues facing the world today, in technology and economics.

This first conversation is with Sidney Rittenberg, author of The Man Who Stayed Behind, founder of Rittenberg Associates, a personal friend to every Chinese leader from Mao to Hu Jintao, and arguably the world’s most informed (non-Chinese) expert on China.

Sidney and his family share residences and offices in Beijing and the U.S., and his firm has helped U.S. corporations, including Microsoft, develop business in China. Sidney’s driving motivation in life appears to be the vision that China and the U.S. must become and remain long-term friends, and that anything which contributes to this is for the good. His 16 years of solitary confinement in Chinese prisons, courtesy of ex-friend Mao, led to his resignation from the Communist Party in the late ’70s, and perhaps sharpened a clarity in his love for the people of China, and his view of its institutions.

We began this tape-recorded conversation on the deck of Sidney’s home, looking out over a harbor on a beautiful, sunny summer afternoon. Our talk opened on subjects dear to our personal interests – new promising technologies, physics discoveries – before moving on to China politics and economics (the subject of last week’s issue) and ending with the role of Intellectual Property and its protection in Chinese, U.S., and global economics. I doubt there is a more important economic subject on the table today, and I still recall my sense of real achievement and understanding as our discussion came to a close. – mra